Letters

In the quest for cures, animal-based research is indispensable

Sharon Howe is "keen to see a cure" for Parkinson's disease without recourse to what she calls "outdated and misleading animal-based research" (We're not terrorists, and we're not against progress, March 10). But the animal-based research in Oxford, which she dismisses, has already generated a successful treatment for the symptoms of that disease. I've had the privilege of meeting one of the beneficiaries of this treatment; he told me that the electrodes that have been permanently implanted in his brain suppress his tremors and cause no discomfort. Most memorably, he said that the procedure had made his life worth living again.

Finding a treatment for a neurological disease is even more difficult than finding a new antibiotic. In each of these quests, animal-based research has been indispensable. It's significant that the first human patient treated with penicillin didn't get better but died. Research previously undertaken on mice had established penicillin's safety and its ability to counteract bacterial infections. Those results prompted further trials in humans. The benefits have been incalculable.

Everyone would prefer a world in which safe and effective treatments could be developed without animal tests. Ms Howe maintains that the only impediment to creating such a world is insufficient funding - but fails to address the practicalities. While it is clear that epidemiology can identify risks, developing a cure requires a completely different approach. It isn't good enough to repeat the wishful-thinking mantra that cell culture and computer models can provide sufficient tools to generate new treatments. Humans (whether healthy or diseased) are the most complex integrated systems known. Although cell culture is valuable for research on component systems, this approach necessarily neglects large-scale heterogeneous systems.

The abstractions inherent in computer models reflect our knowledge of the system in question and are inevitably imperfect. Computer models are used extensively in aeronautical engineering; but a test pilot is always needed to establish the actual performance of a new design. Surely it's obvious that neither the petri dish nor the computer can establish whether an untested treatment will affect (intentionally or otherwise) functions of the whole body such as blood pressure. It's ironic that at a time at which holistic treatments are extolled, the methods for treatment development that encompass the whole body are vilified as "outdated and misleading". I encourage Ms Howe and those who share her aspirations to confront the practicalities. Instead of "returning [your] first-class Oxford degree as a personal protest against the university's new biomedical research centre", please retrain and get involved.Professor Clive Coen King's College London

Timothy Garton Ash (Comment, March 2) makes a fetish of science, but ignores the fact that it is science that makes it impossible to deny that the sentience of other animals is not very different from our own. Or that science has developed better means of research and testing for human medicine than the Victorian barbarism of animal labs.Eric Rosenbloom East Hardwick, Vermont, USA

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